Monday, March 19, 2001

Departmentalized

The sign near the grocery door apologizes for the dust and says they're "remodeling our store for your shopping convenience." As it turns out, this does not mean they're moving the beer closer to the entrance or training the bag boys to be more receptive to amorous advances. Instead, they're installing a mini-branch of a bank at which I do not have an account, a florist, a coffee bar, a one-hour photo lab, a video rental department and an booth where I can get fitted for glasses or contact lenses while the seafood department steams a lobster for my dinner.

This is happening everywhere. A once-cozy bookstore I used to frequent has expanded to three floors in a massive building occupying a whole city block. Now, in addition to books and newspapers, there's a smart bistro on the mezzanine overlooking a vast selection of specialty clothing, adjacent to sections where they sell cards and overpriced gift items, videotapes, computer software, DVDs and compact discs.

Not to be outdone, the store where I buy compact discs has begun stocking t-shirts, assorted leather clothing, magazines and books. They also have a coffee bar...but so does my dry cleaners. No, seriously.

Yes, the record store sells books! The bookstore sells records! The Sam's Club store down the street sells a case of Comet cleanser -- more than anyone could possibly use in a lifetime -- for $14.99, underpants by the 144-piece blister-pak and radial tires that they'll install for you while you have your hair done at their in-warehouse salon.

I don't want to come off sounding like an old fuddy-duddy, but I plainly remember when bookstores sold books. Just books. At music stores, you could find records and tapes without tripping over a tapas bar on the way the jazz section. And what might you expect to find at a food market? Food, as astonishing as that might seem.

There were stores that sold more than one type of item. I recall it distinctly: they were called department stores, huge structures looming over the urban landscape -- two, three, sometimes even five or six floors of clothing, music, appliances, even radial tires.

But such old-fashioned merchants were outmoded, we were told. Specialization, m'boy! That's the wave of the future. Why settle for a small selection of books here at Sears when you can patronize this gleaming monument to literature down the street? Every title you could possibly want and more! Why choose from only one or two leather jackets on display at JCPenney's when The Leather Barn has racks and racks and racks of just leather jackets?

Well guess what? The Leather Barn now stocks blue jeans and jewelry and cocktail dresses, none of which feature leather as a component. There's a coffee bar in the back, I just know it, and it's just a matter of days before they wedge some Kenmore washer and dryer sets in behind the belts. Everything's becoming a department store again, but nobody's talking about it.